Liquid crystal display (LCD) devices utilize one or more light sources positioned behind or to the side of an LCD panel to produce images on the LCD panel. The use of one or a small number of light sources reduces the effective contrast of the images displayed by the LCD panel. Furthermore, the light generated by multiple light sources is fairly mixed within the backlight region of the LCD device, and thus adjusting brightness for one light source (to reduce power consumption or improve contrast) on one region of the display inadvertently adjusts the brightness of other regions of the display.